A scammer calls an individual purporting to be from a bank’s fraud squad and informing them that they need to move funds to a safe account, when in reality the individual will be sending money to an account controlled by the fraudster.
Scammers were responsible for roughly 1.4 million fraud incidents in the UK during the first half of 2023, according to industry estimates.
In light of the growth in scamming, challenger bank Revolut is introducing technology that can break the scammer’s “spell” and detect APP scams.
Revolut claims their AI-scam function, which is used in conjunction with existing fraud detection technology, uses “sophisticated” machine learning to detect if a consumer is being scammed, breaking the scammer’s “spell” before they send their money to the criminals.
The technology, developed internally by Revolut’s financial crime team, can assess whether a consumer is making a card payment as part of a fraud and, if so, deny the transaction.
The customer is subsequently directed to a “scam intervention flow,” in which they offer additional information about the transaction they were attempting to determine whether they were being scammed.
Customers are also provided unique scam educational stories to persuade them to consider carefully before making a payment.
Revolut can also link the customer to a chat with a Revolut fraud specialist, who will ask them further questions to evaluate whether they are being defrauded.
Since the debut of the card scam detection tool, Revolut claims it has observed a 30% drop in fraud losses caused by card scams in which money is transmitted for investment opportunities.
In 2023, Revolut discovered that Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp accounted for 60% of all reported UK fraud instances.
“With this advanced feature, rather than completely block those transactions, we ensure that customers who want to perform legitimate payments continue to do so, but also intervene to protect those who are being guided by criminals to make fraudulent ones. We are giving our customers both freedom and security at the same time. For example, a growing number of banks are increasingly restricting or heavily limiting the ability to make card payments to crypto and investment websites“.
David Eborne, Head of fraud, Revolut
